It is equally just that I should publicly express my gratitude to the Italian, English, Dutch, American and German journals that have translated many of my articles; and to the men and women of these different countries as well as of France, who have kindly expressed sympathy for me, and encouraged me in the struggle which I have undertaken against the adversaries of the rights of my sex.
To you all, my friends, both Frenchmen and foreigners, I dedicate this work. May it be useful everywhere in the triumph of the liberty of woman, and of the equality of all before the law; this is the sole wish that a Frenchwoman can make who believes in the unity of the human family, as well as in the legitimacy of national autonomies, and who loves all nations, since all are the organs of a single great body,—Humanity.
CHAPTER I.
MICHELET.
Several women have sharply criticised Michelet's "Love."
Why are intelligent women thus dissatisfied with so upright a man as Michelet?
Because to him woman is a perpetual invalid, who should be shut up in a gynæceum in company with a dairy maid, as fit company only for chickens and turkeys.
Now we, women of the west, have the audacity to contend that we are not invalids, and that we have a holy horror of the harem and the gynæceum.
Woman, according to Michelet, is a being of a nature opposite to that of man; a creature weak, always wounded, exceedingly barometrical, and, consequently, unfit for labor.
She is incapable of abstracting, of generalizing, of comprehending conscientious labors. She does not like to occupy herself with business, and she is destitute, in part, of judicial sense. But, in return, she is revealed all gentleness, all love, all grace, all devotion.